When Jennifer Garner's separation from her husband of 10 years, Ben Affleck, was announced, the actress couldn't watch it play on screens. "I turned on CNN one day, and there we were," she told Vanity Fairin her first interview touching on the divorce. "I just won't do it anymore. I took a silent oath with myself last summer to really stay offline. I am totally clueless about all of it. Ben says, 'Oh, you just don't care,' and I say, 'No, it's the opposite.' It hurts me so much, and I care so much."

Jennifer never expected the relationship to fall apart. "It was a real marriage. It wasn't for the cameras. And it was a huge priority for me to stay in it. And that did not work."

Ben is still the love of her life; he's still a part of her life; and she does not regret the relationship, she explained:

I didn't marry the big fat movie star; I married him. And I would go back and remake that decision. I ran down the beach to him, and I would again. You can't have these three babies and so much of what we had. He's the love of my life. What am I going to do about that? He's the most brilliant person in any room, the most charismatic, the most generous. He's just a complicated guy. I always say, 'When his sun shines on you, you feel it.' But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it's cold. He can cast quite a shadow.

…Of course this is not what I imagined when I ran down the beach, but it is where I am. We still have to help each other get through this. He's still the only person who really knows the truth about things. And I'm still the only person that knows some of his truths.

Christine Ouzounian, the nanny whose alleged affair with Ben became tabloid fodder for months, wasn't the reason for their split: "We had been separated for months before I ever heard about the nanny," Jennifer said. "She had nothing to do with our decision to divorce. She was not a part of the equation. Bad judgment? Yes. It's not great for your kids for [a nanny] to disappear from their lives."

Jennifer told the outlet the infidelity was no bombshell to her: "Don't worry—my eyes were wide open during the marriage."

The couple's focus now is the kids—and that is the reason Garner wants to be on good terms with Affleck, she explained: "We're completely in line with what we hope for them. Sure, I lost the dream of dancing with my husband at my daughter's wedding. But you should see their faces when he walks through the door. And if you see your kids love someone so purely and wholly, then you're going to be friends with that person." Jennifer doesn't want people to think ill of him: "No one needs to hate him for me. I don't hate him. Certainly we don't have to beat the guy up."

It's difficult for Jennifer, someone who has strong faith in marriage, to pick out the moment she realized she couldn't save hers with Ben. "I'm a pretty hard worker. It's one of the pains in my life that something I believe in so strongly I've completely failed at twice [she was also married to Scott Foley from 2000 to 2004]. You have to have two people to dance a marriage. My heart's a little on the tender side right now, and it's always easier to focus on the ways that you feel hurt, but I know that, with time and some perspective, I'll have a clearer sense of where I let the system down, because there's no way I get off in this."

Dating is a maybe for Jennifer. "I don't know, It's just that [from] everyone that I know that is dating it just seems, well…. Men don't call anymore…. I want flowers; I don't want to text. What does that make me? What kind of dinosaur am I?" Her focus now is just moving forward. "I'm taking good care of myself."

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Redbook participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.